Environmentalist

By Brian Onali Nduw   Every year, world leaders gather at yet another climate summit, announce yet another trillion-dollar climate finance goal, and return home. Meanwhile, a smallholder farmer somewhere, especially in Africa, watches her maize wilt in a drought that was never supposed to be this bad, this early, this relentless. The connection between those two scenes, the conference hall and the cracked field, is not just political. It is financial, institutional, and deeply moral. Climate finance is supposed to be the bridge. Over the past decade, a body of evidence has built up around what this bridge actually looks like, who is paying to build it, who is crossing it, and, most critically, where it keeps collapsing. Drawing on the latest academic research, policy analyses, and civil society accountability reports, it is possible to tell one clear, damning, and ultimately hopeful story: the money exists, the economic case is overwhelming, the governance tools are availab...